by Lee Goldberg
Chad held a quarter out to Odett. "Be my guest."
Odett left without taking the quarter. Chad would need it for his medical bills.
* * * * * *
All the windows in Kimberly Woodrell's house were open that night, the cool, ocean air blowing the smell of wet paint out of the house and onto the street, where Charlie Willis stood on the curb, having just been dropped off by the studio limo.
The scent of polluted ocean spray, mixed with the exhaust of a hundred cars on Pacific Coast Highway and paint fumes from the house, made Charlie long for the comparative freshness of the recirculated air in the plane.
Even so, he hefted his suitcase and trudged up to Kim's front door, which doubled as some blowtorched work of art, a thick metal sculpture with a dead-bolt and a handle. He was looking for a place to knock that wouldn't slash his knuckles when Kim opened the door wearing only an oversized, untucked man's shirt and cut-offs.
Her shirt was open just enough for Charlie's eyes to fall into the deep crevasse between her breasts. While his eyeballs were climbing out of her shirt, her gaze was on his suitcase.
"I hope you're the security guy," Kim said, "because if you're not, you're awfully presumptuous."
"I'm Charlie Willis, Ms. Woodrell. I apologize for how I look, I just got off a plane."
She stepped aside to let him in. "You're the first man who's ever come into my house with a change of clothes. Usually I have them out of here by sunrise. This will take some getting used to."
He followed her in and when he saw the stark, white walls and chrome furniture, he half-expected to hear the theme from 2001 and a greeting from HAL. Welcome aboard, Charlie, but please refrain from looking down Kim's shirt.
"Urine is impossible to clean off," she said. "So I had a crew come in and entirely repaint the place."
"What did you do with all your artwork?" Charlie asked. There was enough wall space to hang half the Getty collection.
"It's all in here," she led him into the stainless steel kitchen and pointed to the door of the sub-zero refrigerator. There was a Valet Girls calendar stuck to the door with a plastic hotdog magnet.
"There it is," she said.
"I get the impression you're not a lady who likes to be tied down."
"Depends," she said. "You got any handcuffs on you?"
First the clothes, or lack thereof, then the come-on. Maybe it was the jetlag, or the paint fumes, but Charlie felt like he missed a step somewhere. He decided to press on.
"Do you have any enemies, Ms. Woodrell?"
"Of course I do. When you cancel a show, you're also canceling careers, marriages and mortgages," she said. "I've canceled a lot of shows."
"Old boyfriends, maybe? Disgruntled help?"
"My old boyfriends are the disgruntled help," she said. "But that's not who did this."
"Who did?"
"I think it was Don DeBono," she replied.
Charlie knew DeBono from his 13 weeks as the star of My Gun Has Bullets and found him to be pretty direct in his dealings. DeBono certainly didn't mince words when he fired Charlie and canceled his show. Of course, Charlie had just accidentally killed his guest star with a prop gun that somebody loaded with real bullets.
"I have a hard time seeing the president of UBC breaking into your house and pissing his day away."
"Cute," she smiled at Charlie and took a step towards him. "Can you see him squeezing my breasts, Charlie?"
She started fondling her own breasts as she walked up to him. Charlie wanted to take a step back, but overruled his instincts and didn't move.
"Can you see him bending me over my desk and fucking me up the ass?"
No, but he could see what was happening here, what began the moment she opened the front door.
"Are you going to demonstrate that too?" Charlie asked. "Because if you are, Ms. Woodrell, I think I'd appreciate it more if I was sitting down."
She was a power freak, someone who had to be in charge on every level. By asking Charlie for protection, she was exposing her vulnerability, which probably made her need to establish her power even more. If he let her intimidate him now, she'd wipe her butt with him every day this job lasted.
"Use your imagination," she said, letting go of her breasts, but still standing well within Charlie's personal space, almost close enough to feel the erection he wished he didn't have.
"Were you willing or unwilling?" he asked.
She met his gaze. "I liked it, for a while. But our relationship wasn't just the office quickies. I was his protégé. He was Henry Higgins and I was Eliza Doolittle."
Now Charlie was stuck trying to shake the image of Julie Andrews draped over a table, Rex Harrison giving it to her from behind, while both of them gleefully sang "The Rain in Spain."
"He taught me everything he knew about network television and I—" She let her voice trail off. "Let's just say I was there for him. But he became obsessed with me, and I had nothing more to learn. When Milo Kinoy offered me the Big Network, I was ready to leave."
"So now you're going to use everything you learned from Don DeBono against him."
"Now can you see why he would do this?" she walked past him into the living room.
Charlie followed her, still holding his suitcase, only now it was strategically placed in front of his groin.
She was facing the window, watching the waves crash against the shore, washing up the Santa Monica Bay's rich bounty of used syringes, motor oil, and styrofoam.
"What about Clive Odett?" Charlie asked. "What does he have against you?"
She started to laugh. "That I made him too rich. Valet Girls is a Company package. He gets a cut of everything from that show, even the merchandising. Maybe he's upset I got the calendar for free and gypped him out of his dime."
Kim turned to Charlie. "The opportunity to run my own network is very important to me, Charlie. It's the culmination of everything I've worked for. Someone wants to take it away from me."
For a moment, Charlie saw something approaching fear in her eyes, even neediness, but then it quickly disappeared, replaced by cold resolve.
"I expect you to make sure that doesn't happen," she said.
"I will," Charlie said. "From now on, if someone wants to hurt you, they will have to hurt me first."
Kim looked at him and knew he meant it. No man had ever said anything like that to her before, and if any of them had, they certainly would have been lying.
"Would you mind showing me to my room? I'm afraid I'm so tired, I can barely stand. I've had a killer day."
She led him to a room just off the kitchen, with it's own door to the beach. It was no doubt designed to be a maid's quarters. The room was as stark as the rest of the house, with only a bed, a night-stand, and a reading light that resembled a dental drill.
"I'm just upstairs if you need me," she said.
"I think it works the other way around."
"We'll see," she smiled and walked out, leaving Charlie to his dreams.
Chapter Ten
At five thirty in the morning, Charlie awoke to voices in the kitchen. He pulled on sweats and a t-shirt and went to check it out.
Kim was leaning against the counter, munching on a croissant with one hand and talking on cordless phone with the other, her loosely sashed bathrobe revealing that she wore only panties underneath. She acknowledged him with a smile and a slight nod and kept talking on the phone.
"I don't care what contracts we have, Phil. You made those deals before I got here. We're not going to build a network on UHF stations. Go back to every one of those cities and get me a 2 through 13 or I will find someone who can."
Charlie went to the refrigerator, mainly to turn his back to her and give her a chance to close her robe. He found a carton of orange juice and closed the door.
She hung up the phone, but seemed unconcerned about her nakedness. If she wasn't, Charlie wasn't going to be.
"You get an early start, Ms. Woodrell."
"If I didn't, New
York would be three hours ahead of me. I don't like anyone to be ahead of me."
Kim let her eyes roam over Charlie, who felt stupid, just standing there in his rumpled sweats and t-shirt, holding a orange juice carton. But she didn't seem to mind.
"You're the first man who's ever spent the night," she said. "I think that earns you the right to call me Kim."
"Where can I find a glass, Kim?"
She tilted her head towards the cabinet directly behind her, but she made not effort to move or to get the glass for him.
"Or you can just drink out of the carton," she said, "like I do."
Charlie popped open the carton and drank from it. He decided to start the day the easy way.
* * * * * *
He insisted on driving her to the studio himself, keeping a close eye on the rear-view mirror, but he didn't see anyone tailing them.
Kim spent the entire drive on the cell phone, and somehow managed to talk to 35 people in the 45 minutes it took to get to the studio. Her conversations were short, but he admired their efficiency. She got right to the point and made it clearly. This was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of every person she dealt with, and didn't waste time with any unproductive conversation.
It made Charlie rethink everything that was said between them since they met. He came away with the same conclusion he made last night. She needed him, but didn't want to appear weak, and was desperate to assert control over the situation.
Once on the lot, he walked her to her office in the Pinnacle Tower, and made her promise to beep him if she intended to leave the studio. She agreed and marched into her office, closing the door behind her.
Now that Charlie was stuck at the studio for the day, he realized he had no where to go, not even an office to call his own. The closest thing he had to an office was Alison's, so he headed there.
But when he got there, her door was open but she wasn't around. He decided to hang out there anyway. Besides, her office practically invited him inside.
Alison made a point of rarely closing her door, and she always had a couple jars of candy on her paper-cluttered desk and her coffee table. She never touched the sweets herself, they were lures.
You'd be surprised, she once told him, how many executives will pop in as they are passing by just to get a handful of jelly beans or steal a mint. Inevitably, they would sit down and chat for a few minutes, so it wouldn't look like they were just there to steal candy, and she'd get to know them. It was an easy way to develop relationships with executives who, ordinarily, wouldn't have much interaction with her.
But that was the only pre-meditated aspect of her office decor. Otherwise, it seemed an extension of her own, warm personality. The shelves were over-stuffed with props and mementos from the TV shows and movies she'd worked on. A collection of baseball caps from various productions hung on pegs on the back of the door. And her walls were cluttered with photographs of her laughing and smiling with family and friends, not one of them a famous celebrity.
He asked her, once, how she got in the business. She told him she was born into it. Alison was raised by her mom, who worked as a unit publicist on movie sets. So that meant Alison spent most of her childhood on the road, spending two or three months at a time on location, being tutored on the set along with movie star brats while her mom hyped lousy movies and covered up scandals. Alison figured what she was doing now was sort of the family business.
Alison barreled into the office and slammed the door behind her.
"God-damn, sonofabitch, asshole, shitbag!" she yelled, surprising Charlie, who had never seen her be anything but perky and enthusiastic.
"I guess I should have waited outside," Charlie said quietly.
Alison jerked, startled, noticing Charlie for the first time. She was mortified. "Oh my God, Charlie, I didn't see you there. Forgive me."
"It's your office, I'm the one who should be apologizing."
"I've had a horrible morning, and it's not even 10 a.m. yet."
"What happened?"
She went to the window and pointed down at a soundstage. "You see the Cadillac down there?"
Charlie glanced down and saw a red Coupe De Ville. "Nice car."
"It says in Toby Lober's contract that he gets a new Cadillac every season. There's a whole list of options he's got to have on the car," explained Alison, "It was my job to pick up his car at Casa De Cadillac and bring it to him at the studio."
Toby Lober was once a movie star, but after a decade of movies that were D.O.A at the boxoffice, he took refuge in TV as the $100,000-an-episode star of Space Case, about an interstellar private eye. Charlie met him on his last picture, Borderline Psycho, in which Lober portrayed a Border Patrol officer pursuing a serial killer along the California/Mexico border.
"So he comes out of his trailer to see the car and stops, this horrified look on his face. I ask what's the matter? He says it's blue. I go, is that a problem, Mr. Lober? He says it certainly is, my psychic colorist told me blue is bad color for me this year. I can't have a blue car. I can't have blue in my life at all. Take it away."
"It's not the first time you've had to deal with crazy actors."
"Wait, it gets better. I couldn't return the car because it was a special order, it had all those options he wanted. So I took it to a body shop and had it painted red. I brought the car back to him this morning and he says what did you do? I tell him I had it painted. He says I can't take this car. I ask him why not? And he says because it's still a blue car underneath, you stupid bitch."
She stared out the window, angry all over again. Charlie started to laugh.
She glared at him and snapped: "What?"
Which only made him laugh more.
"I don't see what's so funny," she said, but was smiling despite herself. "Charlie!"
But it was too late, she couldn't hold on to her anger in the face of Charlie's hearty laughter. She started laughing, too, and once she started, she couldn't stop.
Charlie took her in a big, warm hug, and she rested her cheek against his broad chest, soothed by his laughter and his strong embrace.
"Are we the only sane people in this business?" Alison asked, when she could finally catch her breath.
"I'm afraid so," he replied, his laughter ebbing, gently stroking her hair. "You can't let them get to you, Alison, or one day you'll quit and I'll be out here all alone."
Alison closed her eyes and pressed her hands against his strong back. She felt as long as he was here, nothing would ever bother her again.
Charlie was looking out the window, and was just becoming aware of how nice, how comfortable, it felt having Alison in his arms, when he saw a black Hummer come through the front gate.
* * * * * *
Conrad Stipe had dreamt of this moment, hundreds of times, over the last twenty years. Just six months ago, he couldn't get a meeting with a custodian at The Company, much less the super-agent himself. Now he had an office at a studio, and Clive Odett was sitting on the other side of his desk, practically begging to represent him.
Stipe adjusted his girdle, leaned back in his chair, and made a show of glancing at his diamond-studded Schaffhausen DaVinci Perpetual Calendar Chronograph. "Make it quick, Clive, I'm a very busy man."
"I think, with the considerable resources of The Company behind you, we can take your career to the next level."
Finally, after twenty five years, he was getting the success and recognition that he deserved, that was owed to him. Clive Odett coming down to see him confirmed that he was a major, industry player once again.
"That's real nice, Clive. But I got agents falling all over themselves to sign me," he said, "What can you do for me the others can't?"
Clive Odett knew there were no others. Once the series was a success, he was going to force Stipe out and put one of his younger, more talented, clients into place. Stipe could stay on as an executive consultant. Or die.
"I think a multiple series deal, and a feature film commitment are well within
reach," Odett said. "If I'm doing the reaching."
Stipe wanted to sign that instant, but major players in the industry aren't desperate. They make other people desperate.
"I'll consider it, Clive." Stipe stifled a smile. It was fun watching Odett squirm. He had the power, and he was going to use it.
Odett casually took a folded paper out from inside his jacket and laid it gently on the desk. "This is a one time offer that expires in 90 seconds."
Stipe sat still for a moment, shocked. Just like that, his power was taken from him. If he signed that paper, Odett was in control, and Stipe was forever a notch below him. He was tempted not to sign, just to show Odett who was boss. But Stipe knew who was boss.
He snatched the paper before Odett could change his mind and signed it. Odett smiled thinly and tucked the paper into his jacket pocket.
"You've made the right decision." With 89 seconds to spare, by Odett's calculations. "Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the show."
"It's going to be the biggest hit of the season," Stipe said.
"Not with Chad Shaw," Odett replied. "Consider Dustin Woods instead."
Stipe was wondering if maybe he was too hasty signing with Odett. How could Odett be a super agent, and recommend Dustin Woods over the hot star of a sensational hit series? Woods only series role was as the angst-ridden boyfriend of the angst-ridden girl in the short-lived drama Miserable Me.
"Chad Shaw is the wet dream of every woman under 30 in America," Stipe said. "And we've got him on a five-year contract."
"He's also a very unlucky young man. He's prone to all kinds of disfiguring accidents," Odett stood up and shook Stipe's hand. "My advice, think about Dustin."
"Maybe we could have lunch at the club sometime," Stipe didn't belong to a club, but he figured Odett did. "If I can get away."
"Getting away is impossible now, Conrad." Odett smiled and walked out.
There was something about the way he said that which made Conrad Stipe, a major player in the industry, wish for one, insane moment that it all really was a dream.
* * * * * *
Odett emerged from Stipe's bungalow and was shocked to discover that his Hummer was gone. He hadn't bothered to set his alarm because nobody on the Pinnacle Studios lot would even dare touch his car. That his Hummer was gone was unthinkable.
